Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Fu Hang Dou Jiang in Taipei

My local colleague mentioned last night that there was a famous Taiwanese breakfast place just a few minutes walk away from the hotel. And famous it was indeed...when I got there after just after 8 AM, there was already a line snaking down the stairs for it! Fortunately it moved fairly quickly, and I was able to get this bowl of savory soybean milk along with an egg-stuffed shao bing. I don't know if it was necessarily anything *that* special, but this is the first time that I've had such a shao bing done so thickly.

Perhaps more notable was the fact that this place was tucked away in a food court on the second floor of this building (108 Zhongxiao East Road Section 1). In fact, had the hotel's bellman not mentioned that to me, I might have missed this place altogether, possibly ending up at an outlet of Yong He Dou Jiang that was conveniently placed on the ground floor just a little further into the alleyway, surely to catch similar passers-by who didn't know better as well as people who didn't have the patience to wait in line.

Note to self: next time try arriving earlier (I think they open as early as 5:30 AM), in part to beat the lines, but also so that I have enough time to go back to the hotel and change rather than schlepping my luggage there in a suit and smelling like grease just before heading to a client meeting. Thankfully I could at least get a pack of gum afterwards given the dragon breath that resulted from the scallions in the soybean milk.